Migrate WordPress sites directly from WHM server to GitHub repositories without local downloads.

Overview

This process will:

Inventory all WordPress installations on precisewebhosting.com.au
Create private GitHub repos for each site
Export MySQL databases on the server
Push everything directly from server → GitHub (no local storage needed)

Prerequisites

1. GitHub Personal Access Token

Create a token with repo permissions:

Go to: https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
Token name: WordPress Migration
Select scopes:
- ✅ repo (all sub-options)
- ✅ delete_repo (optional, for cleanup)
Generate token
Add to .env:
GITHUB_TOKEN=ghp_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

2. SSH Access

Already configured:

Server: cento.nosp@m.s@pr.nosp@m.ecise.nosp@m.webh.nosp@m.ostin.nosp@m.g.co.nosp@m.m.au
Key: ~/PreciseITServices.pem

3. WHM API Token

Already configured in .env:

WHM_TOKEN=Z7Q6MQKO3ULQ0W8UAIP9DLWTWLJZQ1YI

Step-by-Step Process

Step 1: Inventory WordPress Sites

Scan the server for all WordPress installations:

cd /home/cw/Documents/IBG_HUB/rmm-psa-backend

./migration-scripts/inventory_wordpress_sites.sh

What it does:

Connects via SSH to WHM server
Scans all /home/* directories
Finds directories with wp-config.php + wp-load.php
Extracts database credentials, versions, sizes
Saves to: exports/wordpress-inventory/wordpress_sites.json

Output example:

[
  {
    "username": "precise01",
    "path": "/home/precise01/public_html",
    "location": "public_html",
    "version": "6.4.2",
    "site_url": "https://example.com",
    "size": "850M",
    "multisite": false,
    "database": {
      "db_name": "precise01_wp",
      "db_user": "precise01_user",
      "db_password": "...",
      "db_host": "localhost",
      "table_prefix": "wp_"
    }
  }
]

Step 2: Review Inventory

cat exports/wordpress-inventory/wordpress_sites.json | jq

Check:

Site URLs are correct
Database credentials present
Exclude any test/dev sites

Step 3: Migrate to GitHub

Run the migration (pushes directly from server):

./migration-scripts/migrate_wordpress_to_github.sh

What it does for EACH site:

Creates GitHub repo: Independent-Business-Group/wordpress-[domain]
- Example: wordpress-example-com
- Private repository
- Auto-generated description
On the server (via SSH):
- Exports MySQL database → database.sql
- Creates .gitignore (excludes wp-config.php, cache, logs)
- Creates README.md with migration notes
- Creates wp-config-template.php (environment variable version)
- Initializes git repository
- Commits all files
- Pushes to GitHub main branch
- Cleans up .git folder (resets for future runs)
Logs results:
- Success/failure per site
- Saves to: exports/wordpress-migration/migration_log.jsonl

Progress output:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌐 Migrating: https://example.com
   Repo: wordpress-example-com
   Path: /home/precise01/public_html
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 
   Creating GitHub repo: Independent-Business-Group/wordpress-example-com
   ✅ Repo created successfully
   📤 Pushing to GitHub from server...
      🗄️  Exporting database...
      ✅ Database exported (database.sql)
      ✅ Created .gitignore
      ✅ Created README.md
      ✅ Created wp-config-template.php
      🔧 Initializing git repository...
      📦 Adding files to git...
      🚀 Pushing to GitHub...
      ✅ Push complete!
   ✅ Successfully migrated https://example.com

What Gets Pushed to GitHub

Each repo contains:

wordpress-example-com/
├── wp-admin/
├── wp-content/
│   ├── plugins/
│   ├── themes/
│   └── uploads/      # All media files
├── wp-includes/
├── database.sql      # Full MySQL dump
├── wp-config-template.php  # Environment variable version
├── .gitignore
├── README.md
└── index.php

Excluded (via .gitignore):

wp-config.php (sensitive credentials)
.htaccess (server-specific)
Cache directories
Log files

Repository Naming Convention

Format: wordpress-[sanitized-domain]

Examples:

https://example.com → wordpress-example-com
https://www.my-site.com.au → wordpress-my-site-com-au
https://subdomain.example.com → wordpress-subdomain-example-com

Troubleshooting

Database Export Fails

If database export fails:

# SSH into server and test manually:
ssh -i ~/PreciseITServices.pem centos@precisewebhosting.com.au
 
# Test mysqldump:
mysqldump -h localhost -u dbuser -p dbname > test.sql

Git Push Fails

Check GitHub token permissions:

Token must have repo scope
Token must be valid (not expired)
Organization must allow token access

Site URLs Unknown

If site_url is "unknown", the database connection failed. Check:

Database credentials in wp-config.php
MySQL server is running
User has SELECT permissions

Next Steps After Migration

1. Link Domains to Customers

Update the RMM+PSA database:

UPDATE domains
SET github_repo = 'Independent-Business-Group/wordpress-example-com'
WHERE domain_name = 'example.com';

2. Deploy to DigitalOcean

For each repository:

Create DigitalOcean MySQL database
Import database.sql
Create App Platform app from GitHub repo
Configure environment variables:
DB_NAME=wordpress_db

DB_USER=doadmin

DB_PASSWORD=...

DB_HOST=db-mysql-...ondigitalocean.com

WP_HOME=https://example.com

WP_SITEURL=https://example.com
Point domain DNS to App Platform

3. Update wp-config.php

The wp-config-template.php uses environment variables:

define('DB_NAME', getenv('DB_NAME'));
define('DB_USER', getenv('DB_USER'));
define('DB_PASSWORD', getenv('DB_PASSWORD'));
define('DB_HOST', getenv('DB_HOST'));

Rename to wp-config.php after deployment.

Migration Status

Track progress:

# View summary
cat exports/wordpress-migration/migration_log.jsonl | jq -s '
  {
    total: length,
    success: [.[] | select(.status == "success")] | length,
    failed: [.[] | select(.status == "failed")] | length
  }'
 
# List successful migrations
cat exports/wordpress-migration/migration_log.jsonl | jq -r 'select(.status == "success") | .site_url'
 
# List failures
cat exports/wordpress-migration/migration_log.jsonl | jq -r 'select(.status == "failed") | .site_url'

Cleanup

After verifying all sites migrated successfully:

On GitHub: Repos are private and safe
On Server: WordPress files remain unchanged (git folders cleaned)
Local: Only JSON inventory files created (~few KB)

Estimated Time

Inventory scan: ~2-5 minutes (depends on server)
Per site migration: ~1-3 minutes (depends on size)
71 sites total: ~2-4 hours

The migration runs unattended - start it and check back later!

Security Notes

✅ All repos are private
✅ wp-config.php excluded from git
✅ Database passwords not in git history
✅ GitHub token not logged in output
⚠️ database.sql contains all data (keep repos private!)
⚠️ Don't commit wp-config.php changes directly

Support

Issues? Check:

exports/wordpress-migration/migration_log.jsonl for errors
SSH connection: ssh -i ~/PreciseITServices.pem centos@precisewebhosting.com.au
GitHub token: verify scopes at https://github.com/settings/tokens
WHM access: curl -k -H "Authorization: whm $WHM_TOKEN" "https://precisewebhosting.com.au:2087/json-api/listaccts"